Dorothy Goodbody's the girl for me

My heart was broken when the wonderfully appetising, bottle-conditioned, version of Guinness was withdrawn from the British market in 1993. Now I have found new hoppiness, in the embrace of Dorothy Goodbody.

This legendary daughter of a hop-grower lends her name and a voluptuous 1950s look to the label of a stout, with which I first had a brief encounter at the famous Brickskeller in Washington, D.C. Dorothy Goodbody's Wholesome Stout was recently judged supreme champion at the National Winter Ales Festival, in Manchester, England. The festival is organised by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA).

The brew pours with a rocky head and has a fragrant, lemon-zest, aroma; a cleansing, resiny, palate, and a very late, lingering, peaty dryness. At a modest 4.6 per cent alcohol by volume, it is packed with flavor. The beer's creator is Peter Amor, a former shift brewer at Guinness. When a later job, at Bulmer's Cider, ended in redundancy, Amor set up on his own. His Wye Valley brewery, is behind a pub called Barrels, in the city of Hereford, in the hop-growing (and cider-making) county of the same name, on the English side of the border with Wales. Now, in its third expansion, the brewery is about move into the former premises of Symond's Cider, in nearby Stoke Lacey.

What is the secret of his stout? "It's the Irish-grown Northdown hops. They have a deeper flavour than the English ones," I am assured by brewer Simeon Davies, who trained as a chef-patisseur, and worked at the posh Caledonian Hotel, in Edinburgh, Scotland.